When ordinary people used geocentric language back then, do you think they realised it was just a convenient way of describing a sun that only appeared to move because the earth was rotating? Why ever would they think that way? Or would the simply assume that the sun they saw appear to move across the sky was actually moving?
Astronomers believed the sun rotated around the earth. That's probably what made predicting eclipses so hard if not impossible. You want to make science mutually exclusive but that really doesn't account for the Roman Catholic Churches continued interest in Astronomy. Protestants have been pretty indifferent while Jesuits have built observatories all over the world.
Galileo didn't go to an inquisition because of an observation he made regarding celestial objects. Galileo was in trouble because he challenged Aristotelian mechanics. When the professors of Pisa couldn't refute, or even argue effectively they turned to theologians.
What is more and I think this is important. Maybe God did stop the sun in the sky that day Joshua was pursuing his enemies. As a matter of fact that would be the preferred since it's an historical narrative. Now I'm open to the idea that perhaps God just prolonged the light by some means or the wording is too obscure to say. That does not change the fact that even though I'm a Young Earth Creationist by default, I will pursue Old Earth Cosmology as an alternative when it suits me.
You really have nothing of any relevance here. Galileo ran afoul of academics who were pro status quo and a Roman Catholic Church that was being challenged politically by the rise of Protestantism. The problems were not astronomy, the problem was Aristotelian scholasticism. The only modern equivalent would have to be Darwinism, nothing else in modern academics is nearly as transcendent.
]By a few eggheads you mean all the church fathers, scripture scholars and theologians, all of the church leaders and teachers who thought the Joshua stopped the sun moving across the sky? But eggheads or not, it was the theologians and scripture scholars who had to deal with heliocentrism a science that contradicted the literal interpretation of the church for 1500 years. Now please answer the question were these theological and scripture scholars wrong to find a new interpretation when science showed the old interpretation was wrong?
What difference could that possibly make? The interpretation of astronomers, for the most part, was heliocentric. The literal interpretation is fine, it is describing in matter of fact terms and if that means God stopped the course of the sun in the sky then that's what happened.
I get a little tired of pretending this is a relevant line of reasoning. Can God stop the course of the sun in the sky? Would he want or need to? What exactly was Galileo doing at the Inquisition in the first place?
Those would be sound questions that actually pertain to something relevant. Belittling a literal interpretation depreciates Christian scholarship as it has been practiced for 2000 years. Historical narratives are almost exclusively literal, not withstanding figurative language. There is no figurative language in the opening chapters of Genesis. That's not because it's religious or because we want to believe something. It's because that's how historical narratives are read. The literal reading was never the problem, the problem has always been that the status quo doesn't need to be right or proven.
Perhaps God did stop the sun in the sky. Is that anymore incredible then darkness for the space of three hours?
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. (…
And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God. (Matthew 27:45, 27:51-54)
At the opening of a revelation like the one at the time of Moses and Joshua or the New Testament advent of the Gospel, this kind of thing is presented as emphatic proof of divine intervention. Three hours of darkness, that's what it literally says...
...so tell me Assyrian, what actually happened there for three hours?
Grace and peace,
Mark